Perry Initiative

Perry Initiative 2016

At the ORS 2016 Annual Meeting the Women’s Leadership Forum (WLF) hosted the Perry Initiative for the first. During this event, 30 high school students joined members of the ORS community for a hands-on day of exploring orthopedic surgery and engineering. The enthusiasm for this program was amazing with more than 50 female members of the ORS volunteering their time to come help with demonstrations and inspirational talks on being members of the orthopedic and engineering communities. The students attending this event had a wonderful time learning how to put on casts, perform a spinal fusion and place IM nails among other activities. Through this activity, members of the WLF along with the Perry Initiative hope to inspire girls enter the fields of orthopedics and engineering and to change the future of clinical care.

Perry Initiative – University of New Mexico

The University of New Mexico (UNM) Department of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation hosted our fourth annual Perry Outreach Program on Saturday, March 19, 2016. Two high-energy representatives from the organization—who also happened to be graduate students in engineering—flew out from Pennsylvania to lead the all-day, hands-on workshop designed for high school girls. The goal of the program is to expose young women to the field of medicine and engineering. At the event, we had a total of 20 volunteer physicians, residents, and medical and engineering students lead 40 participants in various modules and lectures. Furthermore, the site introduced a new engineering component during lunch, involving the repaired sawbones of a morning module on intramedullary nailing. To effectively test the maximum strength of the repaired sawbones, UNM engineering students developed a custom-made load frame that applied (and recorded) force to the object until breakage occurred. Participants were thus able to both create and test their own surgical repairs in a delightful competition that highlighted the essential collaboration between surgery and engineering.

If you are interested to support Perry Initiative, please contact the ORS office at 847-430-5022 or lewsza@ors.org.